


oaks to timber

by marcaskane (noblydonedonnanoble)



Series: Author's Faves [8]
Category: 19th Century CE RPF, Artists RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:53:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25011931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/marcaskane
Summary: Their friendship was bursting at the seams even before Gauguin arrived in Arles.
Relationships: Paul Gauguin/Vincent van Gogh
Series: Author's Faves [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1788160
Comments: 9
Kudos: 17





	oaks to timber

**Author's Note:**

> Yes hello I watched _At Eternity's Gate_ the other night, and this pairing swept me off my feet. I couldn't stop turning over the first line of this fic in my head, so I had to write a little something. I hope it brings at least a few folks some joy.

Their friendship was bursting at the seams even before Gauguin arrived in Arles.

Gauguin could not have said what it was bursting _with_. With exasperation, perhaps; with vehement disgust for van Gogh’s handling of his brushes and his paints; with frustration over van Gogh’s peculiar mood swings.

But it was bursting with longing, too, which Gauguin never allowed himself to feel unless his head was dizzy with drink. Bursting with visions of tumbling into dark corners of Paris streets, or into Gauguin’s bed, and getting his mouth on every inch of van Gogh’s skin.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that, if he acquiesced and joined van Gogh in Arles, those seams would tear.

\--

They were arguing, not for the first time, about the way van Gogh attacked his canvas.

“Your vision is so beautiful,” Gauguin told him. “Why are you muddling it with so much mess?”

“Stop calling it mess,” van Gogh snapped. His eyes never left the painting, but he gesticulated with his brush, sweeping a broad, all-encompassing gesture in the air. “This _is_ my vision. You can’t decide that parts of it are mess and other parts are not.”

Gauguin scowled at his paints. His own strokes were particularly decisive that day.

\--

The first time he saw van Gogh trembling through one of his attacks, Gauguin was truly concerned. He had known, of course, of the deep sadness that sometimes struck his friend, but this was something else—something that left van Gogh looking physically and emotionally ravaged, barely able to fumble for water, let alone stand or walk.

Yes, the first time, Gauguin was concerned.

Only there wasn’t just a first time. There was a fifth, a fifteenth, until eventually Gauguin lost track.

It reached a point where it was little more than an annoyance, sometimes even an embarrassment. One evening, they were at the brothel, and Gauguin was chatting with a few of the girls when one of the others interrupted.

“Vincent is outside,” she told him, with absolutely no concern for courtesy or discretion. “He’s a wreck, Paul, you have to take him home before he scares the business away.”

Gauguin nearly let him sleep in the gutter.

\--

They stumbled out of the local bar and out of town at some early hour of the morning. Van Gogh was dead-set on getting an unobstructed view of the stars, and Gauguin found himself swept up in it—in van Gogh’s sloppy, dreamy craving to touch the night sky.

Besides, it meant time spent together where they weren’t bickering—increasingly rare, as their little yellow house became increasingly little and increasingly oppressive.

“Here,” van Gogh announced, seemingly at random. He planted his feet in the meadow a ways off the road and he gazed around them in intoxicated wonder.

Gauguin swallowed and looked around as well. It was beautiful, perhaps; the sky was clear, the stars bright, and there were a few hints of firelight from the town and scattered cottages in the distance. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that van Gogh was seeing something more, something spectacular.

He deserved to see it too, but he’d become nearly convinced that such efforts were futile. Their eyes, minds, hearts worked too differently.

Van Gogh’s eyes were on him when Gauguin looked his way once more. Van Gogh’s eyes were on him, shining and warm and still conveying that same sentiment of intoxicated wonder.

Gauguin’s fingers dug into the back of van Gogh’s neck as he pulled him close. Their kisses were sloppy and reckless and Gauguin tasted blood, though he couldn’t have said who was biting.

They fell into the grass, and Gauguin’s fingers and tongue clambered to get the slightest touch, the slightest taste of wonder.


End file.
